Taiwan Is Both Exhilarated and Unnerved by Trump’s China Remarks

Lin Fei-fan, a protest leader, in Taipei, Taiwan. He is excited by President-elect Donald J. Trump’s apparent willingness to rethink the One China policy, but also anxious: “We are suspicious of his motivations.”Credit
An Rong Xu for The New York Times

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Lin Fei-fan led the charge nearly three years ago when hundreds of students occupied Taiwan’s legislature to protest a trade deal with China. With the island’s economy increasingly tied to the mainland’s, and Beijing’s global influence on the rise, he worried that Taiwan’s independence was at stake — and might be a lost cause.

Now, thanks to a couple of sentences uttered by Donald J. Trump on a talk show, Mr. Lin has new hope.

The president-elect stunned the world on Sunday by suggesting he might abandon the One China principle, the bedrock understanding under which the United States established relations with Beijing and cut official ties with Taiwan nearly four decades ago. His apparent willingness to rethink longstanding American policy that prioritizes China over Taiwan has energized Mr. Lin, 28, and many like him. But it has also left them anxious, and asking:

What does it mean for one’s homeland to be put on the table by Mr. Trump, an inveterate deal maker, in negotiations with China’s Communist leaders, who are not known for making concessions easily?

“Many people in Taiwan worry that once Trump takes office, he’ll make a U-turn,” Mr. Lin said. “We are suspicious of his motivations.”

Even as he has elevated Taiwan’s status by speaking on the phone with its president, Mr. Trump has left the impression that he sees the island primarily as leverage to extract compromises from China on other issues.

Not since Richard M. Nixon traveled to Beijing in 1972 to dangle the prospect of abandoning Taiwan has an American leader so explicitly attempted to use it as a bargaining chip with China, which considers the self-governing island of 23 million to be part of Chinese territory.

The gambit has both exhilarated and unnerved the people of Taiwan, who yearn for greater international recognition but have long been worried about being sacrificed as a pawn in a geopolitical chess game.

Photo

Cutouts of Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump at a hotel in Taipei in November. Mr. Trump has left the impression that he sees Taiwan primarily as leverage to extract compromises from China on other issues.Credit
Billy H.C. Kwok/Getty Images

Many have applauded Mr. Trump’s stand, describing his decision to break protocol and speak by phone with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s leader, as an overdue gesture toward one of Washington’s most reliable friends in Asia and a young democracy. Taiwan is the United States’ ninth-largest trading partner and has purchased more than $46 billion in American weapons since 1990.

But residents are also coming to grips with the reality that their most vocal champion on the world stage now is a businessman known for his love of cutting deals and his erratic approach to policy making.

“He’s an uncontrollable force,” said Hsu Tse-mei, 57, a retired bank manager in Taipei. “We’re caught between two powerful countries, China and the United States, and we’re at the mercy of Trump.”

The stakes are high and help explain why Mr. Trump’s predecessors have generally left the One China policy untouched.

Since the Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Communist Revolution, generations of Chinese leaders have vowed to reunify the island with the mainland and threatened war to prevent it from formally declaring independence. In the mid-1990s, China fired missiles into waters off Taiwan in an attempt to intimidate supporters of a formal separation.

When the United States established relations with China in 1979, dropping its official recognition of the Nationalist, or Kuomintang, government in Taiwan, it secured a pledge from Beijing that its “fundamental policy” was to pursue reunification by peaceful means.

Many in Taiwan are now afraid that China could reconsider that commitment if Mr. Trump scraps the One China policy.

“I’m worried that China may take military action against Taiwan,” said Li Meng-chieh, 33, a graphic designer in Taipei. “If that happens, it will derail our current way of life.”

Such worries extend even to supporters of President Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party has long favored greater independence from the mainland and has traditionally been willing to accept greater risks to pursue it.

Photo

Protesting with a tattered Chinese flag in Taipei in August. Society on the island is deeply divided on the issue of closer relations with the mainland.Credit
Ritchie B. Tongo/European Pressphoto Agency

Ms. Tsai’s administration has repeatedly assured China of its desire to maintain the status quo, and Lo Chih-cheng, a lawmaker from her party, said officials in Taiwan had avoided playing up the phone call with Mr. Trump so as not to antagonize Beijing.

“We have tried to behave ourselves,” Mr. Lo said. “But obviously China was not happy about it, so they chose Taiwan to blame. They used Taiwan as a scapegoat to divert their domestic discontent.”

Jason Hu, a vice chairman of the opposition Nationalist Party, said initial excitement over the phone call had become regret. “It’s a big power play that Taiwan should not be involved in,” he said.

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Taiwanese society is deeply divided on the issue of closer relations with the mainland. Some see the island’s prosperity as inextricably linked to China, while others are worried that Taiwan is already too dependent on the Chinese economy and thus vulnerable to pressure from Beijing. But few in Taiwan are interested in reunification under China’s authoritarian political system.

The Chinese leadership is worried Mr. Trump will make its goal of reunification even more difficult to achieve and embolden those in Taiwan who want to pursue greater international recognition and a more formal break with the mainland.

The government in Beijing has ratcheted up its criticism of Mr. Trump in recent days, including with an editorial in a state-run newspaper that called him “as ignorant as a child” on foreign policy and suggested China might offer military assistance to American enemies in retaliation.

But China is likely to lash out against Taiwan first. “The Chinese can punish Taiwan and get away with it,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, “but they can’t do that to the Trump administration.”

When Mr. Nixon met with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, he hoped to use the prospect of a break with Taiwan and normalization of relations with Beijing to drive a wedge between China and the Soviet Union and secure China’s help in ending the Vietnam War. But President Xi Jinping of China has taken a hard line against independence for Taiwan and Hong Kong and may not have much room to maneuver given rising nationalist sentiment in the party and the broader public.

Analysts said it would be politically difficult for Mr. Xi to offer concessions on trade or security issues in the face of Mr. Trump’s statements on the One China policy, which Beijing has long portrayed as nonnegotiable and the prerequisite for cooperation on other issues.

Video

China’s Foreign Ministry on Taiwan

China's foreign minister spokesman, Geng Shuang, urged the United States to stick to the "One China" policy and said China continued to oppose any official exchange between the United States and Taiwan.

“This will put Xi Jinping under pressure at home,” said Su Chi, chairman of the Taipei Forum, a nonpartisan think tank, and a former official in the Nationalist Party, which favors closer ties with the mainland. “He will have to take action to show that he can’t be played around and taken advantage of by the Taiwanese president.”

Other Republican presidents who have expressed support for Taiwan — Ronald Reagan pledged to continue arms sales indefinitely, and George W. Bush vowed to do “whatever it took” to defend the island if attacked by China — generally did so in ideological terms, supporting its evolution into the world’s only Chinese democracy.

But Mr. Trump has not made such statements, and that has prompted many in Taiwan to question the health of the island’s relationship with the United States.

Some argue that Mr. Trump’s approach should be a sign that Taiwan cannot rely on Washington and needs to strengthen ties with other countries in Asia.

Others say that he has presented Taiwan with a chance to expand trade with the United States and build support among the American public.

“We need to talk to the American people so they can have a deeper understanding of Taiwan. We want to tell them that we are their true ally and that we share many common values,” said Huang Kuo-chang, chairman of the New Power Party, which emerged from the student protests in 2014 that successfully blocked the trade deal with China.

Mr. Lin, the student protest leader, said Mr. Trump had opened a potential path for Taiwan to gain the international recognition that he and others have been fighting so long for.

But sitting at a Taipei cafe behind a laptop computer with a sticker that read, “When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty,” Mr. Lin also acknowledged that Mr. Trump was an unlikely and perhaps unreliable ally.

“We are not naïve,” he said. “We don’t believe that the election of a new U.S. president will necessarily bring about huge changes. But if there’s an opportunity, we will definitely not give it up.”

Huang Shih-han contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on December 16, 2016, on Page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: Hope and Skepticism for Trump in Taiwan. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe